


Choke Points

by Defnotmeyo



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Triggers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:01:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defnotmeyo/pseuds/Defnotmeyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surely this idea of this virus didn't come as a complete surprise to an expert conspiracy theorist and a medical doctor, right?  Scully works to save Mulder and Miller (sigh... yes Miller, too), and they get help from an unexpected source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reaction

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know a ton about the science of anything but hey, then, neither does Chris Carter. I don't really have the time to learn much of it, but I am going to do my best and hopefully be vague enough to be plausible and helpful enough to be entertaining. I'm mainly gauging the interest right now, but I will definitely be finishing this bad boy out. Oh yeah, forgot this last time I wrote one but I don't own anything.

“Grab Mulder. NOW.”

She doesn’t know why, her instincts in control, but Miller and herself, with her partner, need to execute a reverse escape from the bridge. Miller, though sick, is strong. He hauls Mulder up and they race backward to her utility vehicle. They are u-turning in seconds and as Scully maneuvers opposite traffic on the bridge there is a fireball. The bridge is gone. They cross back to solid land just in time.

She tracks much of the same sidewalk and road backward as she did forward. She stops only to send Miller up to gather Einstein. He is her sickly henchman. Einstein comes down with a couple of duffle bags full of shit and Scully is sure when they decide to land somewhere these duffel bags will have whatever she needs to science them out of this situation. Oddly, Skinner ends up in the car, too. Scully will never remember this timeline. But that doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot with Mulder dying in the passenger seat of her car. 

Get to William. 

Where is William?

Who the fuck is William, now at this point in his life?

As she curves and swerves through Georgetown, she stops short. The man in front of her is familiar, and he is blocking their path. He slams the hood of the car with his fists as she screeches to a halt. 

“FUCK!” She screams. Does a double take. “GIBSON?!”

He nods and Scully unlocks the doors. He jumps in the truck. A party for six now.

“I’m not immune,” Gibson coughs to her. “But I found you anyway.”

“Why?” Her pulse hasn’t slowed for hours, days even. Since she couldn’t raise Mulder on his cell phone, maybe.

“Because I can find Will.”

“William?”

Gibson smiles softly in the backseat, in a fever pitch, shakes his head. “Will.” He twists, looks at her solemnly. “Hit the 80 and floor it. Let me know when you need a break.”

Scully silently hopes that there are not many bridges between DC and wherever they are headed. Choke points. The easiest way to take out the populace and strand the country. 

Miller coughs and slouches in the back, Einstein passed out against him, drool and snot dripping from her nose. She’s not healthy, yet. Skinner is smushed in the back like a crumpled linebacker. Mulder shivers in the passenger seat, his head lolling and his eyes unfocused, at death’s door. Scully has seen that look before. She’s seen death’s bleary gaze more times than she can count.

Scully floors it. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him reach for her, and now that they’re on relatively empty roads she grabs his hand like the last grasp on a mountain before plummeting down the side. 

She’s taken back to the rear of an ambulance, another decade, another time they both almost died. Only, she’d rather they be covered in yellow digestive enzyme than where they are now, battling Mulder’s enemies from the inside of his body rather than out. His worst demons have always fought them from the inside out.

She hopes her damn estranged brother managed to grab her dog before he hopefully split from DC. She hopes he’s not dead. The brother and the dog.

The contagion is awkwardly insufficient. A believer in all disease but a master of none. Either way, lacking or professional, it will kill you. It is Captain Tripps on acid and right now Stephen King doesn’t seem so entertaining.  
Scully scans the radio stations. For music, really. The SUV is woefully silent. Miller is wheezing, Mulder is barely breathing, Gibson is tossing back and forth, Skinner is sweating from every pore in his body, and Einstein is hopefully recuperating. There is nothing. There is static. This is the end.

\-------------------------------

Miller tumbles out of bed unceremoniously. The nightmares since his illness have been unrelenting. Men without faces and rooms full of smoke. What the earthly fuck has he gotten himself into? Recovery is proving to be a chore. His lungs burn and his stomach roils. He has to choke back vomit as he stands over his dick, pissing into the toilet. Wouldn’t want to toss his cookies onto the twig and berries, he finds the energy to smirk.

He looks in the mirror and sighs. He looks exactly like he feels. Like complete shit. The nausea claims him then, and he dives for the toilet, hurling up his empty guts. The past seven days since he pulled Fox Mulder from that shitty house have been nothing but a fever dream. 

He hasn’t seen much of anyone since they holed up in a cabin near Jackson, Wyoming. Everyone seemed to have a universal quarantine in effect. He didn’t really come around until two days ago, and even then he’s been unsteady on his feet. His memory is shaky, at best, and at worst, blends perfectly into every nightmare he’s had over the past two weeks. 

They’d spent an incredibly tense 28 hours on the road. The Spartan Virus, or as the slowly dwindling internet traffic affectionately dubbed it, “King Leonidas,” wasn’t chasing them. It was simply a gentle stalker, floating in the cabin of the vehicle they drove, participating in every cough and sneeze.

Miller grabs toothpaste and a brush from the medicine cabinet near the mirror. As he brushes his teeth, his memory flashes.

\--------------------------------

Whispered voices. “Agent Scully, I think we can help Agent Miller but…”

“Stop.”

Uncomfortable silence for a moment. “He’s too far gone Dana.”

The world slows and Miller feels his body bounce forward into his seatbelt in the uncomfortable cramped back seat that, in his mind, he has dubbed The Sick Ward.

“Agent Einstein-“

“It’s Leigh…”

“Agent Einstein, my PARTNER is in the backseat of this car. And no matter how far gone you think he might be, he can still hear every single word you say. And if you didn’t notice, your PARTNER is in the backseat too. So if you want to stick to the science, and figure out with me where we go from here, then fine, but if you want to keep telling people they are going to die then you can kindly get the fuck out of this car.” Her words are delivered in an icy venom that rocks Miller to his core as he rests his feverish head against the back window. 

He is a little pissed that Einstein is so carelessly attempting to piss away the life of a man he stuck his neck out for. He pulled Mulder from a house on the verge of death. He drove Mulder to a bridge and found Scully. He saved Mulder, for now. And he realizes, in that moment, that he’s earned Agent Scully’s complete and wholly devoted protection. His head aches. His eyes water in fever-haze. But he lets his them roll back in his head and closes his lids. He might be okay.

\------------------------

Miller moves the brush across his teeth and hits his tongue. His breath has felt stale and woody for the last few days. The brush scrapes the back part of his tongue and Miller blanches, then gags. He’s no sooner done brushing his teeth than he is throwing up again into the toilet. King Leonidas has made him nauseated and simultaneously lackadaisical. He hasn’t felt like moving from his bed in days.

He stands after launching his insides into the toilet. His dark five o’clock shadow has morphed into a rabid animal on his face. Not a wolf, full and domineering, but a smarmy raccoon. His facial hair is patchy and sarcastic. He hates his patchy beard. It has never grown in full and he’s felt adolescent his whole life because of it. 

Miller is once again struck by his inadequacy in this mission he’s engaged himself. He’s a child who broke away from the FBI day tour and printed up a fake badge. He’s prancing around with Liquid Bubbles and a wand in the shape of a Glock 23, but his bullets are no more efficient than soapy water.

He rips open the medicine cabinet and sees a packaged razor and shaving cream. Miller goes to work.

\---------------------------------------------

Mulder groans. It’s a sound he’s made so many times in his life he knows instantly he is waking up after some serious anesthesia. He can’t quite force his eyes open yet but his tongue works over his lips in a slick hot mess of spit. God dammit he hates  
waking up in the hospital.

Truth be told, the only redeeming factor of waking up in an emasculating gown is the fact that he is certain once he opens his eyes, he will be afforded the million-watt Dana Scully smile he knows will be on the other end. The “Mulder, you didn’t die!” smile. It is then he realizes he isn’t in a gown, and he is stark naked under his sheets.

He feels like shit. His head aches and his nose burns and his face feels like a two by four smashed its way into his orbital socket. He wants to vomit but he swallows his loose saliva, realizing he is on his back and he is not one hundred percent he can roll over. He pushes himself from his back to his left forearm, his eyes water and the pooling spit threatens to pour from his mouth to the bed below. As he rolls from one side to the other, his guts swoop and dive uneasily. Mulder has almost never felt worse.

“Sshhhhh… Lay down. Lay back down.” 

Her voice. Soft, soothing, a rag up on his forehead. It’s going to be okay.

Her grip on his forearm as he tries to push out of bed. Why did she leave again? It's been days... months? Since he's seen her. He feels her cool hand press against his cheek and he urges his eyes open.

His reward is only half what he hoped. It is, at best, a thousand-watt Dana Scully smile, and she's on the verge of bursting into tears. He flashes back to coming alive from the dead and his stomach sinks.

It takes a minute before he realizes that the sinking feeling isn't dread. It's bile and stomach contents. Which he quickly expels all over Scully's forearm. 

She peels away in a flash but it's too late. She tries to make him throwing up on her a nonchalant event. Like they do this all the time. 

Mulder's eyes are open just long enough to see her frown deepen impossibly, worry etched across her face. She looks every year of her age today. 

"Well Scully..." he manages to choke out. "That's not exactly how I intended to ejaculate on you, after all this time..." he wheezes, groans once more and is out. And his world fades, he is sure he can hear her goofy, full bellied laugh.


	2. Mustang

He’s always been able to fit in at the fine dining table, but that’s really not his scene. He knows that he can meet the President and not fuck it up, but would much rather sit in one of the back rooms and kick back a whiskey, than sit in the Oval Office and pretend he knows the deepest secrets of the FBI, or what lies in the bowels of the basement of the Pentagon.

He’s sat in his office for over twenty years now; two chairs in front of his solid desk. He’s seen people wilt in those chairs. Shrink from him, shirk their responsibilities. He’s seen grown men confess their sins and women close to tears as he tears them down. 

Hell, he’s seen men almost cry in these seats. Walter Skinner, in his 64 years of life, has seen it all. 

He’s a Mustang, you see. Mustangs are a rare breed in the world. 

The horse, itself, is everything an American was meant to be. The Mustang is a mutt, for all intents and purposes. Originally descendant from the Spanish, but feral and free. The Mustang broke loose and became something greater than itself. 

A Mustang is no thoroughbred. It isn’t sleek and ready to race. They aren’t stock cars, built for the track. Nor are they the American Quarter horse, thick in the back and ready to sprint the pants off any other horse they come near. A Mustang was born for the mountains. For the hills and plains of the central Americas. 

They are adaptable and learn to survive the environment. They can survive the desert, and are equally at home in the Rockies. There is one common theme, though. The Mustang is wild.

The Mustang refuses to be tamed. In fact, the breed developed the American spirit before there was an American spirit to adopt. Perhaps that’s why it’s become the quintessential roadster, whether in pussy V6 or truly V8 form. 

And so there is Walter Skinner.

He’s blown people’s heads off in close quarters. Children, even. And when he dug himself from the swampy, stinking mass of Vietnam, and set to work repairing his head, after he met Sharon and decided she needed something better, something more than himself, he got down to the business of it. He set out for more. And so SSG Skinner, on his way to becoming a Gunny, became LT Skinner. The lowest of the low, yet more than that because he had his good conduct ribbon and people knew he’d been in the dirt. While the other Officers held the shrimp fork with ease, Walter tugged his collar and counted tongs. 

And when, in the battlefield, the other LTs turned and evaded answering the big questions, LT Skinner stepped up and called the shots, sentenced people to life and death, his soldiers knew. He wasn’t some Academy rat.  
Walter has always been a Mustang. And he knows another when he sees one.

Which is why, the first time she sits in front of him, he knows. He sees the signs. The slight buck of authority. The obstinate flare of the left nostril. There might as well be hooves restlessly redistributing the cheap carpet flooring of his office. 

‘How fucking stupid,’ he thought, that first day. How fucking stupid were they to pair this person with the vampire sitting in the basement office. The man could sit and smoke behind his desk all day but Walter knows that you don’t match a Mustang up to an immovable object. They will find a way to break it free. “Conventional investigation may decrease the rate of success,” she’d snipped… unflinching and her eyebrow begging to twitch. She hadn’t yet developed THAT characteristic smirk. 

And here he is. Decades later. He’s watched them both die. He’s pulled Mulder from a hospital ward, more than once. He’s debriefed each of them, covered in each other’s blood. Because make no mistake… their most visible cases have resulted in blood shed, but it’s been their less publicized that have ended in this office, at times wondering if the other would live.

His accident prone incidentals. Scully’s been shot twice (there was one more, outside of New York), and Mulder’s been grazed more than any sane person should claim, not counting the upper femur and the shoulder. Impromptu brain surgery, cancer, alien retroviruses, tobacco beetles and bees. Skinner has seen it all through his agents’ eyes.

Walter coughs. It’s deep, gravely and bellowing. Hollow. He sniffles against it and his right shoulder aches. Fucking small pox vaccines run bone deep in the winter. He is fever-y, but he sits back in his chair and the past twenty years continue to flash. Most of it taken up with his damn young stupid fucking agents. Even though they are older now. 

Walter has been peripherally in love with Dana Scully since he can remember. Since Tooms, really. Since she bucked him and the rest of the FBI for her partner. She sat in that seat so many before her had occupied, and though her lips and her posture fought for dominance against his questioning, she didn’t shrink. She never shrank in his presence. Perhaps the only person that never would. He feverishly flashes back.  
\-----  
“If you’re trying to prepare yourself, I want you to stop,” he says. He wants to kiss her. “Nothing says that we’re gonna stumble over him in some field. Nothing says he won’t be fine.” She buries herself in his shoulder then. Grabs onto his chest. And when he leads her back to her room, she tugs him in, begs him to follow. 

His feet are glued to the weather stripping. She’s pulling and so is he. Mulder is his friend. And Walter has a deep commitment to the younger man. Dead or alive.  
“Scully.” His low timbre is gravelly with arousal and trepidation. It is vaguely reminiscent of Mulder.

“I just need someone tonight Walter. I’m not asking to fuck you. I just need to sleep.”

His relieved sigh out would be hilarious, if not for the love of her life and his very best friend probably dead on their doorstep in the coming days. He falls asleep on top of the covers, with her beneath, and the following months test their resolve.

\-----

Skinner is glad he never slept with her. He probably could have. Scully has always been a wildcard in the sack and she’s prone to crazy whims. Ed Jerse, Daniel Waterson, Tad O’Malley. Skinner knows about them all. Scully is either in an X-file on them or sharing a bottle of wine with him over dinner. He doesn’t think Fox knows. 

Short of having his nails painted and engaging in a pillow fight, Walter Skinner and Dana Scully are friends. Good friends, in fact, maybe even best. His number is on speed dial when Mulder wraps himself up in Russian organ snatchers, and when the FBI decides the X-files should be back, she’s the first one he calls. So imagine his surprise when:

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself, Walter.”

“It’s looking good for you guys to come back. Got two catches you will be interested in……. Dana?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not on speaker.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m always on speaker.”

There is a pregnant pause. “Now you’re not.”

He rubs his hand over his face. God dammit. These two. “Well. Can you get in touch with Mulder for me?”

“Walter… I can barely get a hold of him myself.”

Skinner wants to punch a hand through a wall. These two god damned idiots.

“Well, get a hold. We want you two back. We’re willing to pay, finally. SAC positions. Same AOR. You just have to requalify. Please tell me you can still J-turn.”

He’s rewarded with a throaty laugh. 

“Walter, I can J-turn you to a U.”  
_____  
She looks great. Mulder does, too, if Walter wants to be perfectly honest. The lean, John Stockton-esque agent in front of him became a man in the past few years, amazingly. He’s put on fifteen or twenty pounds, and while Walt is older but still fit, he’s not one hundred percent he could take Mulder anymore. It’s a disconcerting fact.

“Congratulations on the range and the PFE,” he mumbles. “We’ve got a couple of profiling cases but the biggest concern is we’ve had reports of the retrovirus.”

Scully quickly looks up. “A contagion?”

Walter nods. “I’m going to keep you both on regular cases. But I want you on this contagion behind the scenes. I think it might be starting.”

Scully is silent at first. She’s anticipated this. For years. Her and Mulder have not been idle hands. That may be part of why they don’t share the same bed.

She shoots her eyes to Mulder. “Sure sir. What’s the case?”

He clears his throat and begins a ridiculous story. 

Scully, in the midst of a yet again break up with the love of her life, can’t help but watch the angle of Skinner’s jaw as he sends them to Middle America.  
\-----  
He has a casefile picture. Mulder is hanging over Scully with an umbrella and Skinner idly remembers the name Leonard Betts. He coughs twice and his nose streaks with blood. He swipes it absentmindedly, and his hand slams down on the desk, splots of blood sweeping over the pictures. 

This is it. This is the end.

He hacks again, this time into his hand, and his stomach tosses, starting to ache with nausea.

God dammit he swore he wouldn’t die in this stupid fucking office. 

There is a knock on the door. Skinner’s eyes roll up and he slumps from his office chair. Kimberly should get it. The door has always been hers to answer.

“Sir… Sir… please…” There is dark brown hair above him, and deep green, almost hazel eyes. 

“Mulder.”

There’s a cough, a sniffle. “Yeah. Yeah sure. Sir. C’mon.”

There are strong hands under his armpits, and Skinner tries to open his feverish eyes. 

“Mulder… Scully.”

“She’s driving, sir. She’s immune.”

Another deep, racking cough. “The starlight, Mulder. It’s there.”

He is worse than he thought. He can see the tips of his shoes, as he is thrown fireman style over his agent’s shoulder.

He’s tossed unceremoniously in the back seat. 

He grasps at any fabric he can find. He’s buried in the sweaty pit of another man. Not exactly his first choice.

Skinner coughs, pushes himself feebly away from the body. “Scu-“ he starts. She’s in the driver’s seat. Her hand quickly rips back and rests on his lip. 

“Walter, we have to go.”

“Are we okay?” he asks, afraid of the answer. She’s never lied. 

She looks back. Mulder’s left arm is slung across his body onto his boss. Miller is turned roughly into the corner of the SUV, Einstein pumping fluids. Gibson is the only barely coherent person. 

She looks at Walter. “We’re getting out of here.” 

Bullet scars, cancer, aliens be damned. Agent Scully j-turns and heads for Wyoming. Walter knows what is ahead. And he prepares himself for William.


End file.
